in-sight from little and big life experiences

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The very definition of a divide is that there are two sides, with a line drawn in between! So, yes, every manifest divide has “both sides,” no matter how grossly one-sided it appears, and how vehemently we resist this understanding.

“But!,” the mind protests, “this ‘other’ person drew the line while I was going innocently and merrily about my life, so why is the onus on me to own the divide?” Well, because, the onus can only and always be in one place — on me! I and I alone am the central locus of this experience and reality! I and I alone am the generator of a point-of-view, from which this creation is painted and constructed!(more…)

One can never be off the path as the path is realized every moment of now. It isn’t found or shown by another; it is created as you go along, as uniquely as you! And so, there are infinite paths to Truth.

And yet, there is only One way. The Way (Tao) is a way of being. In alignment. In Self. In Love.

All paths that have ever been “professed” or “taught” are actually only attempting to convey The Way. The original and essential message is invariably a transmission of The Way. (Any true Guru only transmits/awakens The Way.) But because the mind can only comprehend and grasp the path, the measurable, it then gets to ‘learn’ it and practice it and evaluate it and contrast it with ‘another,’ and begin perceiving differences and preferences. (The mind feeds and survives on this activity!) And instead of dissolving the divisive mind, we create more. And so, we collectively have the discordant and dissonant experience of being on different paths or off the path, when all we’ve really done is cut ourselves off from The Way, from the way of being, from Self/Love.

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All pilgrimages, rituals and practices are path-aspects that can set one up for The Way, but they are never The Way!

The one who understands via dvaita (dualism / relativism), naturally sees two ways of understanding — dvaita (dualism) and a-dvaita (non-dualism). The one who realizes advaita (Oneness / absolute) sees no difference 🙂

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A simple illustration for how the mind can perceive night-and-day, ups-and-downs, here-and-there, light-and-dark, good-and-bad, win-and-loss, villain-and-victim, woman-and-man, me-and-other, birth-and-death… happening in infinite cycles. And yet, how, being aligned in the shunya, in the zero-point heart center, where perspective, mind (and time) dissolve, realization dawns that there’s nothing happening… only I am. The Self. Eternally projected as within and without!

When we miss and long for a loved one, no matter who they are or have been to us, we are actually missing the alignment with Self/Love we experience when we flow Love toward them in their (physical) presence. (The mind has attached to them the source of our Love and the good feeling of alignment and home, instead of our abiding in Self, remaining wakeful to their being the external reflection of Self to whom we flow Love, always sourced in Self.) We are not missing them, we are missing alignment with Self/Love, and we are feeling that distance, that gap, between (the concept / identity of) me and Me, the most excruciating rift of all. And all arising emotion is the signal to return to alignment and close that (illusory) gap!

All longing is always for the Self!! The Holy Longing!

The moment we realize this and return home to Self, to alignment, we not only experience the missing dissolve, but also experience all other perceived gaps and distances dissolve. And so, we have an instantaneous and visceral sense of the loved one’s presence, as One-Self, no matter where they are physically, and no matter whether they exist in the physical or have passed on in body. The paradox is that it is the missing and longing that separates us from our beloved… as it separates us from Self, and ‘the other’ is none but One-Self in reflection!

The Holy Longing
a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and a favorite of all time (more…)

The paradox is that choice is only actually realized in choicelessness! Are you able to engage the power of choice when you have no other visible options at hand but the single one? Are you able to wholeheartedly and unequivocally choose what you have? Are you able to wholeheartedly and unequivocally choose what is? This alone is choice! Everything else is an illusion of choice — the act of picking one among multiple options, which is only a sanskaar / pattern-driven reaction. And as a slave to your wants, needs and conditioned patterns, you have no choice at all, no matter how many options present themselves! You only have choice when you are completely free of the conditioned patterns that unconsciously or otherwise, drive your picking one thing over another (or sometimes, drive your indecision in picking one thing over another). When you can choose what you have, when you can choose what is, then you have choice. You only have choice in choicelessness!

Allow this frequently enough, and with grace it may dawn on you one fine moment, that everything that has happened (is happening, and will ever happen) is Your choice — You, the Self.

The opinion is that which the mind constructs between Self and ‘what is,’ to create a divide, a separation, as the mind itself can only exist in two-ness, in perspective. (If you think only one person is building a wall, consider that all of us are, all the time!) Be wholly with ‘what is,’ free of all mediation (assessment, evaluation, label, analysis, editorial, story…), and the apparent gap between Self and ‘what is,’ creating the illusory ‘other’ (person/ event/ situation/ circumstance) collapses into complete Oneness, into Love. Perspective dissolves, the mind dissolves. Allow this frequently enough and just like that, there’s spontaneous realization that Self is ‘what is’! Everything is Self (in) reflection! Self is all there is! Self realization!